Tuesday, December 10, 2013

A Christmas-y Weekend

Last
Friday night I went with Jackie and her family to see Mr. Grumpy's Toy
Shoppe. The play was presented by the Academy for Academics and Arts
which is where Troy attends school and he was in the play. Every student
in the school has a role in the play. Troy is in fifth grade and all
the fifth grade students played astronauts and did a singing and dancing
number.

I
loved the little children especially - the boys played toy soldiers and
the little girls were dollies and they were all so adorable. I guess
the play could be considered a musical since there were songs in all of
the acts. The most touching moment of the play was when all the special
needs children came out dressed in costumes from Mother Goose Land. It
was just precious.

The play was fabulous and all of the children did a
fantastic job! I love that everyone in the school was included in the
play. It was one of the best shows I have seen at Christmas and I
really, really enjoyed it!

On
Saturday morning, Jackie came over and we gathered up all manner of
blanket, chair and Pippa and headed out to the Christmas Parade. The
parade didn't receive much publicity this year, but I had looked it up
late last month and made plans to attend. We arrived at our spot at
around 11:40 and the parade was slated to start at noon. We sat there
freezing our tails off and waiting for the excitement to begin.

Pippa
was pretty rambunctious at first (no surprise there) but settled down
after the parade started. I don't know if she was scared of the loud
noises or just freezing, but The Pip spent the rest of the parade in
between mine and Jackie's chairs shivering.

After
sitting out in the cold for about an hour and a half, we moved our
frozen bodies to the car and watched some of the parade from the car
with the heater on. Pippa was in the backseat with the blankets
shivering still. After the Huntsville High Band passed us, I decided to
check out the list of parade participants and discovered there were no
more bands coming through so we decided to leave.

The
parade was super disappointing this year, and I had really been looking
forward to it because the theme was A Charlie Brown Christmas and that
is one of my favorite Christmas specials. There were only two high
school bands (Huntsville and Lee) and a couple of middle school bands
and the rest were just people in cars driving by and waving. It was the
worst it has been in a long time. Even the "Rev it Up!" lady wasn't
there! I found out later that a lot of bands and other participants
cancelled because it was cold. Weird, I know.

Despite
the disappointing turnout, we still had a good time waving at people
and listening to the few bands that actually did show up. Here's to
hoping next year's parade will be a lot better!